Moderated by:
Dr. Kelvin K. Droegemeier
Professor of Atmospheric Sciences and Special Advisor to the Chancellor for Science and Policy, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Dr. Kelvin K. Droegemeier is Professor of Climate, Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences and Special Advisor to the Chancellor for Science and Policy at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He previously spent 38 years on the faculty at the University of Oklahoma, where he served for nearly a decade as Vice President for Research. He co-founded and directed one of the first 11 NSF Science and Technology Centers and co-founded an NSF Engineering Research Center. Droegemeier served as Oklahoma Cabinet Secretary for Science and Technology as well as two terms on the National Science Board, the last four years as Vice-Chairman. Most recently, he served as Director of The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), Science Advisor to the President, and Acting Director of NSF. He is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and American Association for the Advancement of Science and has served on and chaired numerous boards, including as Chair of the UCAR and SURA Boards of Trustees, and presently serves on the Board on Research Data and Information (BRDI), and the Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy (COSEMPUP), of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. In 2023, Droegemeier authored a book titled Demystifying the Academic Research Enterprise.
Meet the Panel
Michael M. Crow, PhD
President, Arizona State University
Michael M. Crow is an educator, knowledge enterprise architect, science and technology policy scholar and higher education leader. He became the sixteenth president of Arizona State University in 2002 and has led ASU’s rapid and groundbreaking transformation into one of the world’s best public metropolitan research universities. As a model “New American University,” ASU simultaneously demonstrates comprehensive excellence, inclusivity representative of the ethnic and socioeconomic spectrum of the United States, and consequential societal impact.
Lauded as the “No.1 most innovative school” in the nation by U.S. News & World Report for ten straight years, and garnering top accolades for its global impact and student employability, ASU is a student-centric, technology-enabled public enterprise focused on global challenges that grew its research expenditures more than eight-fold since 2003 and earned AAU membership in 2023. Under Crow’s leadership, it has established more than thirty new transdisciplinary schools, including the School of Earth and Space Exploration, the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the School of Human Evolution and Social Change, and launched pioneering multidisciplinary initiatives including the Biodesign Institute, Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, the nation’s first School of Sustainability, and significant initiatives in the humanities and social sciences.
ASU has concurrently achieved record-breaking levels of traditional, online and international student enrollment, first-year student quality and retention, and ethnic and socioeconomic inclusion.
A two-time member of the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Crow is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAA&S), and the American Philosophical Society (APS).
Tsu-Jae Liu, PhD
Dean and Roy W. Carlson Professor of Engineering
University of California, Berkeley
President-elect, National Academy of Engineering
Tsu-Jae King Liu earned her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering (EE) from Stanford University. From 1992-1996, she was a member of the research staff at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, where she worked on thin-film transistor technology for large-area electronics applications. In 1996, she joined the faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) at the University of California, Berkeley, where she has taught and conducted research on semiconductor devices and technology. She began her tenure as Dean of the College of Engineering in July 2018.
Liu has authored or co-authored over 550 publications and holds close to 100 patents. She is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the National Academy of Inventors as well as an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. She also serves on the Board of Directors for Intel Corporation and for MaxLinear, Inc. Her research contributions have been recognized by many awards, including the DARPA Significant Technical Achievement Award for her role in the development of the FinFET, an advanced transistor design used in all leading-edge computer chips today.
In addition to excelling in research, Liu has demonstrated a strong commitment to enhancing the educational experience of students. As dean, she has bolstered programs to support the academic success and well-being of both undergraduate and graduate engineering students, including supporting the success of women and students from underrepresented minority groups and first-generation college students. Liu's most recent initiative is to renovate and expand the Berkeley engineering student center, to create more welcoming and inclusive spaces for students to learn, discover, and innovate together; this construction project is slated to break ground in spring 2023. Liu has also been spearheading a nationwide effort, called the American Semiconductor Academy (ASA) initiative, to establish a collaborative and inclusive national network for microelectronics education, to meet the workforce development needs of the U.S. microelectronics industry. For her outstanding contributions in education, Liu was honored with the IEEE Electron Devices Society Education Award.
Lynne E. Parker, PhD
Principal Deputy Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)
Executive Director, President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST)
Dr. Lynne Parker is Principal Deputy Director of the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) and Executive Director of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science & Technology (PCAST). In these roles, she is advancing policies across the spectrum of science and technology, with a particular focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI). She has previously served in numerous other White House positions, including Deputy United States Chief Technology Officer, Founding Director of the National AI Initiative Office, and Assistant Director of OSTP for AI. In these capacities, she has led the development of numerous landmark national AI policies bolstering research, governance, education, and workforce training, international engagement, and the Federal use of AI.
In addition to her White House roles, she has held numerous other leadership positions, including at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (Associate Vice Chancellor, Leader of the AI Tennessee Initiative, and Professor of Computer Science), the National Science Foundation (Division Director), and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Distinguished Research and Development Staff Member and Group Leader). She has authored numerous peer-reviewed technical papers and is a Fellow of several professional societies. She received her Ph.D. in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Heather Wilson, PhD
President, The University of Texas at El Paso
Former Member of the U.S. Congress representing New Mexico and former Secretary of the U.S. Air Force
Dr. Heather Wilson became President of The University of Texas at El Paso in 2019 after serving as Secretary of the United States Air Force. She is the former president of the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology, and she represented New Mexico in the United States Congress for 10 years.
Active in community and national affairs, she is a member of the National Science Board, which oversees the National Science Foundation, and serves as a board member of the Texas Space Commission. She was the inaugural Chair of the Alliance of Hispanic Serving Research Universities, and is a member of the board of directors of Lockheed Martin Corporation and Google GPS.
Dr. Wilson is the granddaughter of immigrants and was the first person in her family to go to college. She graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in the third class to admit women and earned her master’s and doctoral degrees from Oxford University in England as a Rhodes Scholar.
UTEP is located on the U.S.-Mexico border – in the fifth largest manufacturing region in North America – and serves over 24,000 students with 170 bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degree programs in nine colleges and schools. In the top 5% of public universities in the United States for research and designated a community-engaged university by the Carnegie Foundation, UTEP is America’s leading Hispanic-serving university. It is the fourth largest research university in Texas and serves a student body that is 84% Hispanic.
President Wilson is an instrument-rated private pilot. She and her husband, Jay Hone, have two adult children and two granddaughters.
